~ Children In Heaven ~ 2 Cor 1:3-4

[Bernardd]

Babies are innocent, in that they know nothing of evil and don't know the first thing about sin or their need for Jesus. Yes, all are born with sin natures, but babies don't begin to sin until they're old enough to begin to make choices, good or bad. Even then, they're not yet old enough to understand what sin is and what damage it does, or what their eternal fates will be. For that reason, there is not one single baby or toddler who would be capable of understanding the plan of salvation if you attempted to explain it to him, since he lacks the mental development to comprehend such things.

If God rejected them because they lack the knowledge to accept Jesus into their hearts, every baby and young child who died would go to Hell. That means that, since there's no such thing as limbo for babies (to borrow from Dante's Inferno), they would suffer the anguish of burning in the Lake of Fire for all eternity, just because they're too lacking in knowledge to be able to ask Jesus to save them from their sins.

God is a far more merciful God than that! True, those who are old enough to know and who refuse to act on what they know may well expect to meet their eternal fate, but God does not judge an innocent baby (yes, I use the word deliberately, given what I just typed above) by the same standard He uses for people who are old enough to know. Babies and young children are covered until they reach the age of accountability, even if their parents are not covered by the blood of Jesus. For that reason, if they die, they go to Heaven, and will be resurrected when the trumpet blows. If a young child is still alive when that same trumpet blows, calling up all dead Christians and all children who died while young from Pentecost onward, he will be caught up, too, for the same reason. It is not their mothers and/or fathers being saved that covers them in the sight of God, because no child or adult can ride to Heaven on the coattails of his parents. It is their mental state as described above, whether they're capable of understanding or not.

And, no, the concept of the age of accountability does not mean we can lose our salvation! Not in the least.

Maybe. Of course, there is little proof bibilcally to support this opinion.

If all children are saved due to their "innocent" or lack of konwledge etc. then there must come a point where a child no longer has this excuse or free pass. Wouldn't that be the point where the child "lost" his salvation?

You wrote this...


And, no, the concept of the age of accountability does not mean we can lose our salvation! Not in the least.

...and then just left me hanging.

[CelticMist]

Hi :wave

New to the Bible here but I just read Joshua 10 and I don't see where it says what happened to the souls of the children? Of course it doesn't say that God took the souls to Heaven but it doesn't say he didn't.

I don't understand everything about the rapture but if God took the children's souls to Heaven, wouldn't that have been the same during the rapture?

What about a child born to evil, horrible, abusive, non-caring people but ends up in an orphanage as a baby and then dies? Why would the child (who is not old enough to have made ANY type of choice or old enough to ask to be saved) be punished for having rotten parents?

Haven't good people, good Christians, grown from exactly that type of environment?

Maybe I am just not understanding the question.:idunno

Thanks!:)

BearMom
Hi :wave

Many have questioned why the children were killed along with the parents. The answer they gave was very interesting. The entire community was killed off because the adults were nothing but evil and children tend to imitate their parents. So, the parents were instilling in their children hatred and other evil doings. Sort of like how the Islamic teach their children in the schools about how to kill none Islamic people.

Those born in the family of evil.. that end up at orphanages or are adopted out... I don't think they will be left behind. Like the unborn child that has been aborted. I think each and every one of those child are in heaven (their souls).

Its a well known fact that from the age of infancy to six years old, whatever the child is learning will be revealed in their adulthood. For example: if a boy sees his dad beating his mother all the time and nothing done to correct this violent act, the child grows up believing he too can beat the girlfriend/wife.

Don't know if this answered your question or made it clearer. If it didn't, forgive me!!!

[CountryBumpkin]

It is interesting to note that in speaking of during the tribulation in Mark 13:12 Jesus says: "Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death.

We do not know the ages of these children and yet we realise that they are obviously children. This and other scriptures cause me to believe that not all children go in the rapture.

[kgreen20]

Don't forget that babies will be born in the Tribulation, too. All babies and small children will go in the Rapture, but more will be conceived and born afterward.

[ehbowen]

Don't forget that babies will be born in the Tribulation, too. All babies and small children will go in the Rapture, but more will be conceived and born afterward.

Why? What evidence is behind this statement? Why is it that you believe that a child conceived by non-Christian parents one second before the Rapture will be taken--but one conceived one second after the Rapture must, if he lives, spend his first six years plus of life going through hell on Earth?

God, obviously, is not bound by what we decide on this chat forum. But if we want our conclusions to have some resemblance to ultimate reality, then I think that we need to be consistent in what we decide, for I believe that God is consistent and just in his dealings with mankind.

While I do not claim that, "This is the way IT IS", I do believe that this is the way things could be.

At conception, a child is neither "saved" nor "unsaved"--just uncondemned.

As the child grows and begins to make moral choices, he comes under the condemnation of the enemy. To use a courtroom analogy, charges are filed by the prosecutor, who is Satan. The Adversary is trying to "pull a Clinton"--to get off, scot free, regardless of how many Bob Livingstones he has to destroy in order to do so. If God compromises his justice even once, then Satan's way of escape is in sight. Therefore, out of one side of his mouth the devil tempts humanity to do evil--and with the other side he self-righteously prosecutes us for the evil which he tempted us to do.

We are not, I am convinced, without representation of our own. I believe that the true role of "guardian angels" is not so much to save us from auto accidents (although I do believe that they truly relish any opportunity they get to "put their hands in" to our world), but to act as our public defenders before God when Satan accuses us.

If a child dies before Satan succeeds in his quest to have us found guilty, the presumption of, "innocent until proven guilty" applies. But note that a child who dies in this state is NOT an overcomer. There are no crowns, there is no joint inheiritance with Jesus, there is no welcome of, "Well done" from the Father. There is, I believe, a place to lodge in the Father's house, loving care and guidance from his servants, and eventually productive work to do--but the chance for real rewards has been lost. (Those who are responsible for this loss by intentionally causing the death of children, born or unborn, have MUCH to answer for.)

From my own life experience (crawling into a plastic bag at age two) and observation of others (my niece sticking a paper clip into a light socket at about the same age), I have a working theory that no child survives beyond the age of accountability without divine intervention at some point. Whenever a child grows to the age of moral responsibility, I believe that God and/or his guardian angel is/are convinced that that child has the potential to become an overcomer through Christ. (Many who die earlier do too, I hasten to add--I believe that Satan deliberately attacks many whom he sees as having the potential to cause him trouble.)

While I admit that I could be wrong on this, I believe that Christ's description of his coming as "a thief in the night" precludes a mass disappearance of all children everywhere. When the thief comes by stealth, you may not notice it at all until you begin to look for a certain item and find it missing. I tend to believe that in areas where Christianity has been suppressed, the Rapture will hardly be noticed. I think that those who do notice it, particularly the Muslims, will see it as Allah's wrath being taken upon those heretics who believe that God could have a Son. They would hardly think this if their own children and babies were taken as well!

No, if you believe that all children are raptured then I think that you have to further believe that there will be no more children conceived for the next seven years. Which opens up an interesting can of worms in its own right, but one that I will leave for someone else to address.

However, I do believe that the children of believers will be taken along with their parents; while they will not receive the rewards of an overcomer, they still stand to receive an inheiritance eventually--in the usual way, through their own believing parents. Furthermore, I believe that God will give the guardian angels of those who perhaps were not children of believers, but who will be left uncared for or in similar dire straits by the disappearance of the church, a fairly wide latitude to take them to Heaven as those who are "innocent until proven guilty" are now. Or, if they choose, God and his angels may leave the children in this world with the hope that they will come to be overcomers through the blood and the word of Jesus Christ. I would not be surprised to find that there are many who choose that option--angels, I believe, are eternal optimists.

[CountryBumpkin]

Don't forget that babies will be born in the Tribulation, too. All babies and small children will go in the Rapture, but more will be conceived and born afterward.

"Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death."

This verse cannot mean that babies and toddlers born in the tribulation will turn in their father - they would be too young. Another thing is that if babies are born during the tribulation why should they have to suffer and not the other children born before.

[kgreen20]

LOL! Why should ANYBODY suffer in the Tribulation and not those before? Why should Christians and small children who have already died get to escape the horrors of the Tribulation, just because they died before it started? For that matter, why should the living Church also get to escape?

Forgive me, but I don't really see your logic in your answer. Rather the emotionalism of "Why should some get to escape the suffering that others are forced to endure?"--the same logic that some are, even now, using regarding Christians in the United States who aren't being maimed, tortured, killed, imprisoned, enslaved, murdered, etc., etc., just because we have believed on the name of Jesus (as, sad to say, others are enduring in Moslem and Communist countries). The simple, logical answer is that God is not going to close the wombs of all women who are left behind at the Rapture--they will still be capable of having children, and many will. Don't forget Jesus' prediction of "woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers" when the time comes to escape Jerusalem during the abomination of desolation--that, alone, tells me that there will definitely be children born during that time period.

As for children betraying their parents, well, can anyone look up the original Greek for that word used in that verse, to find out whether that verse was referring to literal children below the age of accountability when the Rapture occurs? I'm thinking that it could have been youth--kids who are in their teens, perhaps--that verse was speaking of, as I can't see a young child, below the age of accountability when the Rapture takes place, having the heartlessness to turn his own parents over to the authorities. A teenager, on the other hand, just might, if he's been corrupted by the Antichrist government.

At least, that's what I'm figuring, anyway.



Kathy G.

[GreenEyedLady]

For children too young to understand as well as for older believers, regardless of whether their parents know or knew Jesus or not.

Now--for those of you who believe that innocent young children whose parents are unsaved can expect to bear the blast and fury of God's wrath in the Tribulation instead of being counted innocent in God's eyes, go ahead!



Yours truly,
Kathy G.

Kathy,
I agree with everything you said. I think when the rapture happens, all of the babies in the womb of those who are lost will also go up to heaven. I believe that the belly's of the women who are with child will literally be deflated at the sound of the trumpet.

[Sydney Spider]

If all children below the age of accountability are included in the Rapture, what about intellectually disabled adults, who are totally incapable of understanding the gospel? :scratch

[LaMontre]

Pro 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

I would not necessarily press salvation into that verse, but I would consider, that if there was only a short time before the end (say, 7 years perhaps), that there might be literally millions of children who would not take the mark of the beast within that timeframe (because of their age) and yet would not necessarily be believers either. In that instance, their parents might be sent to hell, but they themselves would be spared to live on into the MK. It does seem that, below a certain maturity level would simply automatically be spared. However, going in the rapture, is another matter. I mean, all of the scenarios to which Jesus compares the final judgement (Sodom and Gomorah & Noah's flood) all have the entire population being left to be destroyed, including the children. But it seems to me that the MOB is the great divider of the sheep and the goats at the end of the tribulation.

Mat 24:22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.